US conglomerate 3M Co, maker of the ubiquitous Post-it note, has been sued by a US inventor who said he first conceived the sticky message products.
Alan Amron, 67, filed suit in a federal court in Florida seeking at least US$400 million in damages and interest from 3M, according to court documents seen on Friday.
In his suit, Amron, who claims to have 39 US patents, said he had invented the product in 1973 and called it “Press-on-Memo,” but without filing a patent.
However, 3M has stuck to its position that Post-it, one of its most famous brands, was invented by its scientists Arthur Fry and Spencer Silver.
The St Paul, Minnesota-based company began marketing the product in 1977 and sales of the little notes took off in 1980.
Amron sued 3M in 1997 claiming he was the Post-it inventor. The two parties settled the lawsuit, but the terms of their deal were not published.
In his new suit, Amron said that the settlement stipulated that neither side would claim the invention. However, 3M has violated that agreement, he alleges.
He asked for a trial, but the judge favored mediation and gave the two parties until the end of the year to settle their differences.
The firm denied Amron’s claims and said it would seek to have the suit thrown out.
“3M developed Post-it notes without any input or inspiration from Mr Amron,” 3M spokeswoman Donna Fleming Runyon told reporters.
“There was nothing in the settlement agreement that limited what 3M could say,” she added.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group